Social Question

What is your daily useless piece of knowledge?

We all know little things about how something works, why something has the name that it does or other little snippets of information that may be interesting, but ultimately useless to know as it does not improve your life.

Just to give an example from myself. In England the police have the nickname Bobbies and this is due to the politician Robert Peel who introduced the Police Act and really set them up as a force. They are therefore called Bobbies due to it being a nickname for someone called Robert.

So what useless piece of information would you like to share with the masses?

One man from Davis, California bought 12,500 cups of Healthy Choice chocolate pudding, which granted him 1.25 million frequent flyer miles and a lifelong membership to the American Airlines AAdvantage Gold Club for a total cost of about $3,000.

A] In absence of flea powder sprinkle flour or corn starch on the animal, it cause the fur to become too slick for the fleas to hang on. (unverified of course)

B] In a blind test done at a major college where drivers could not see what speed they drove at, the majority was most comfortable driving at 80mph on the freeway.

C] When at a stadium or auditorium, etc. it is useless using a flash over 7ft. Bu the time the light from the flash reaches the subject more than 7ft away it has scattered too much to make a difference. What it has a chance of doing is striking something in the path of your subject like the top of someone’s hat causing your exposure to change and all you get is an overexposed hat or head and your subject forever washed out in the glare.

D] The fluid that goes into your actuating cylinder for your clutch is the same as brake fluid, they just package it in a smaller container and charge you more for it.

The Automobile Association (a UK motor breakdown company) was originally founded in 1906 not to help broken-down motorists, but to warn them about police speed-traps. Members would put the club badge on the front of their car and the patrol would salute you, only if the road ahead was clear. No salute meant slow down!

When writing at Fluther, if you bracket your text with @ symbols, the resultant font will make an upper-case I distinguishable from a lower case l. E.g., if one were to start a sentence with the word illogical: Illogical vs. Illogical.

I was reading a medical chart the other day on a male patient with a chronic UTI which was not responding to regular antibiotic therapy. The nurse noted that the meatus was inflamed. But, evidently, she couldn’t remember the term meatus, so she described the location of the inflammation at the “opening at the distal end of the Penile Corona.” How endearing. I checked and this is actually a 19th century term for the head of the penis and was obviously considered a very regal part of the anatomy at the time. I now look upon mine in a whole new light. Each man a king in his own right, right?

The people of Pompeii had no word for volcano because they didn’t know what one was, hence why many of them didn’t flee while Mt. Vesuvius was erupting. They weren’t stupid, they just had no idea what was going on! Even more interesting to me is the fact that people live around Mt. Vesuvius in the present day. I’d be far too scared to even consider living there!

@mangeons I am just back from a visit to Italy and more than a million people now live in the vicinity of Mount Vesuvius and an eruption is overdue. We visited Pompeii and Herculaneum. Absolutely fascinating.

@flutherother According to the video we watched in my Latin class earlier this week, an eruption of that magnitude only occurs every 2,000 years. Seeing as the eruption that decimated Pompeii occurred in 79 BCE (or AD, if you prefer), and it’s only 2012, we theoretically have about 67 years until it would erupt like that again. Even so, you wouldn’t catch me living anywhere near Mt. Vesuvius, that’s for sure!

Pileated woodpeckers, like most woodpeckers, make their nests in cavities they drill into trees. The fun fact is that if they attempt to make one in too small of a tree, they can actually peck the tree right in half.